Wagah

Season 3 Ep 1 of Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown... if you haven't seen it, you are missing some of the best TV.  I'm a huge fan of Bourdain, and also awesome video editors who can mold together conversation, sounds and street noise into music.  Truly some of the best produced TV I've seen.


The reason I bring this up is
1. Watch more TV.
2. Bourdain and his Indian friend/guide stood across the boarder, about 7 km away from where I am now, pointed out the issues of the people who farm in the no-mans-land and have to cross the boarder every day. Then they joke that people want to come from Pakistan into India, but "no one is foolish enough to go the other way."




They are theoretically in the background of this photo (~minus the time differential)

That is Janet with our lovely elementary principal Sue Boyer, standing in front of the fence... I'd imagine that if we had been there a few months prior, we could have spotted Tony in the background pointing in our direction saying "Yes, no one goes that way."

There were a few tourists there.

It was hot and a Friday and not very busy on our side, there were plenty of tourists on the Indian side.  We sat down in the VIP area.  There are bleachers that you can see in the video, divided up into men's and women's areas.

It is a Cricket match, Disney, and the DMZ all in one.  Ripqa, one of our teachers who is Pakistani sweet talked her way into us getting back where we did to take pictures of all the Indian's leaving and of the border area - the 0 line as it is called.  All in all, very fun.  Also unsettling when you notice the four guys, two Pakistani, two Indian, staring each other in the face right across the line while the whole ceremony is going on.  It reminds you that it isn't the mostly friendly relationship.  After a few of these ceremonies, you'd think that they would become friends, it is all choreographed very well between the two.  Happens every night and worth the trip if you are passing through Lahore, which happens sometimes.